


After a Near Thing

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:18:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8807599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: It's a wet day, and Blair needs new tires...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'pouring'

After a Near Thing

by  Bluewolf

Blair hesitated before pouring the boiling water over the teabag in the mug. Did he really want peppermint tea?

Not really... but none of his other teas appealed to him, either, nor did coffee. The peppermint might at least just settle his churning stomach.

Not that there was anything wrong with him except an excess of adrenaline.

He really must get new tires, and get them tomorrow. The balding ones on the Volvo, that he had hoped would last at least another two months, had skidded badly on the wet road and he had barely avoided a serious accident. He had driven on home at a more than law-abiding twenty, shaking nervously every time he had had to apply the brakes.

He had finished half the tea when the door opened and a very wet Jim entered.

"It's pouring cats and dogs out there!" he said. "This - " he indicated the soaking jacket he was hanging up - "is just from me getting from the truck into the building. Did you at least get home before it got so wet?"

"Well, I didn't get as wet as you did getting from the car and inside," Blair said, forcing naturalness into his voice. Jim did <i>not</i> need to know how close he had come to totalling his car and ending up in Cascade General. "But you know what they say - 'It never rains but it pours'."

Jim groaned. "I'm surprised you're just sitting there enjoying your tea," he said. "I thought you'd be poring over one of your books."

Blair ignored the pun. "Nah, we all have to relax sometimes." He stretched, then took another mouthful of his tea. Strange - the tea hadn't really helped him unwind at all, but a minute of talking to Jim had worked wonders.

"Well, you might be happy with stewed herbs, but I want coffee," Jim said. "Incidentally, where does that phrase come from?"

"What, pouring cats and dogs?"

"Yeah."

"Good question. There are several possible explanations. The most likely bet is that a few hundred years ago, before there was proper garbage disposal, the bodies of dead animals were left lying in the street - or it could have been strays that might have been killed. When it rained really heavily, the bodies of the dead animals could have been washed along, so that people said something like 'It's pouring hard enough to wash away the dead cats and dogs' until a wit cut it to 'pouring cats and dogs'. Personally, I think one of the dead languages had words for different kinds of heavy rain that sounded like 'cats' and 'dogs' - there's a Latin phrase, 'cata doxa', for example - and someone just picked them up, converted them to the English words they most resembled, and hey - instant phrase that everyone knows but doesn't really make logical sense." He grinned. "See - poring over books can give you some info on most things."

Jim poured his coffee, added a little milk, and joined Blair on the couch. He leaned back. "What's the forecast for tomorrow?"

"More of the same," Blair said.

Jim sighed. "I like Cascade," he said. "I really do. But I wish we got a few more dry days than we do."

"We could always move to... oh, Arizona. Isn't a lot of that desert?"

"Nah," Jim said. "I think I'd miss the rain... "


End file.
